- CHICAGO (Reuters Health)
-- A group of drug-resistant microbes that infect the intestine have become
much more common among hospitalized patients and in the general community
over the last decade, a Spanish team of researchers report.
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- The bacteria are called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase
(ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are concerning because
these microbes are resistant to drugs called cephalosporins, and most can
evade other types of antibiotics too.
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- Dr. Rafael Canton of Hospital Ramon y Cajal in Madrid
presented his team's findings here at the 43rd annual Interscience Conference
on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
-
- The researchers compared more than 1200 stool samples
collected from hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients in 1991 with
400 stool samples collected in 2003. The 2003 samples included ones from
healthy individuals, as well as from hospitalized and non-hospitalized
patients.
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- The study is important because it included healthy community-based
individuals, as well as outpatients and hospitalized patients with infections,
Canton told Reuters Health.
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- In 1991, 0.3 percent of hospitalized patients who carried
gut bacteria had ESBL-producing microbes, the authors note.
-
- In 2003, "we found a very high prevalence"
of patients with this type of microbe in the intestine. Overall, 7.5 percent
of individuals carried these microbes. Among hospitalized patients, however,
the rate was even higher -- 10.7 percent.
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- Canton believes that "this is the tip of the iceberg."
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